Trailer Watch: Melt the Wings, by Sebastian Sommer

Filmmaker Sebastian Sommer premiered his debut short at the Tribeca Film Festival this past Spring, and now he is in post on his first feature. Titled Melt the Wings, he described it to me in an email as a mixture of surrealism and mumblecore. The teaser is posted below, along with a director’s statement. Check it out.

Melt the Wings is a feature film that was born out of disassociation with our everyday rituals. Look at your life and think hard about all of the little traditions you go through on a daily basis. People celebrate the day they were born…every year. One has certain times and dates for the consumption of food and drink. And that’s just touching upon the most basic of customs. There is no way to escape it because they get intimate. You are born into a world of ordinance that you must live by. At least until you make your own.

The movie is about an escaped convict who visits the apartment he grew up in as a kid. He undergoes psychotic “episodes” that he forces the current tenant to witness, all the while learning more and more about the tenants past. There are sequences dealing with nostalgia. I used real home footage and tried returning to an earlier mindset. I also feel very passionate about the mumblecore movement and feel that many inspirations came from watching those kinds of films. There are a lot of moments when fiction and reality blend together. Jennifer Prediger (Uncle Kent) has a role in this as well and goes on a rant about sensuality.

I grew up in Manhattan, my short Mama Said Sardine Baby played at the TriBeCa Film Festival, and this is my first feature. The main characters in this film destroy the “mold” society created for them and try to break out of the carbon copy. Everything is looked at from a distant reality. Have I succeeded in any of this? Have I truly lost myself in the process of creation? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’d like to think that I tried… — Sebastian Sommer.